1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and method, which control an electronic device such as a digital camera or the like to transmit data, and store the transmitted data.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system in which an electronic device such as a digital camera having a storage device and an information processing apparatus (host apparatus) such as a computer or the like are connected, and an application which runs on the host apparatus exchanges information such as image data between these apparatuses is known. In the system of this type, image data stored in an auxiliary storage device (for example, a memory card) equipped in the electronic device are transferred to the host apparatus, and are backed up in an auxiliary storage device (for example, a hard disk) of the host apparatus (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-283901). In recent years, a system which analyzes image data stored in the auxiliary storage device of the digital camera, automatically determines those which are not backed up to the host apparatus, and automatically transfers only these data to be backed up to the host apparatus has been proposed.
However, with increased number of pixels of a digital camera, and along with the popularization of a movie capturing function, the data size of image data itself tends to increase, and a time period required to back up data tends to increase accordingly. On the other hand, the user often wants to browse images stored in a digital camera on a large screen of the host apparatus immediately after the digital camera is connected to the host apparatus.
However, in the conventional system, the user cannot browse obtained image data on the host apparatus before the backup processing of all image data is completed. Or the host apparatus executes backup processing of image data in a predetermined order, and the user can only browse image data on the host apparatus in turn from those which have already been backed up. For this reason, when the user wants to browse image data which have a later backup order, he or she can only browse them
(1) after the backup processing of all data is completed, or
(2) after the backup processing of all image data in an earlier reception order upon backup is completed. Therefore, a long waiting time period is produced in some cases until desired image data is displayed on the host apparatus during the backup operation.